Zazie Beetz slaughters Satanists in the OTT horror/comedy They Will Kill You.
Ex-con Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz), fresh from a stretch in prison, gets a job as a maid at the Virgil, an exclusive, century-old apartment building in New York City. If the place reminds you of the Bamford in Rosemary’s Baby, that’s not accidental – the building is home to a Satanic cult, and Asia has been earmarked for human sacrifice.
But when the coven, led by Patricia Arquette’s faux-friendly head housekeeper, come for her in the dead of night, they find to their consternation that Asia is no shrinking victim, having armed herself to the teeth in order to rescue her estranged sister, Maria (Myha’la), who previously disappeared into the building. And from that point it’s on like Donkey Kong.
Directed by Russian filmmaker Kirill Sokolov (Why Don’t You Just Die!), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Alex Litvak (Masters of the Universe), They Will Kill You is a frenetic, fast-paced action comedy dressed up as horror, using its occult premise as an excuse for Beetz to, well, beat the living hell of the bad guys for pretty much the entire running time of the film. It helps that the Satanists are physically immortal thanks to their demonic pact – no matter how much damage is done, they keep coming back, and Sokolov delights in showing how much punishment they can take.
For all that the premise draws on the somber Satanic cinematic offerings of the ‘70s – your Exorcists, your Omens, and so on – They Will Kill You owes a larger debt to more raucous stuff like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films and Peter Jackson’s early schlockers. Quentin Tarantino’s DNA is in there too, Sokolov’s use of crash zooms and whip pans during some of the action sequences recalling not so much the kung fu movies of the ‘70s, but QT’s take on them. It’s references all the way down – and if you clocked that Virgil was Dante’s guide in The Divine Comedy, your English Lit teacher must have loved you.
It works a treat as long as the action is ticking along, and Beetz shows genuinely impressive action chops as she carves her way through the coterie. Strong support comes from Harry Potter alumnus Tom Felton and Heather Graham as a couple of cultists, who both demonstrate total commitment to the bit.
But it wobbles when its trying to explicate its rather clunky lore, and while a flashback-heavy narrative structure might work to explain character motivations, it’s absolute hell on the film’s momentum, although not to a terminal degree. At the end of the day, it’s not quite as smart and not quite as subversive as it seems to think it is.
Having said that, the sight of Zazie Beetz wreaking absolute havoc on a horde of cultists with a flaming fire axe makes up for a lot of shortcomings, and the film’s chaotic “anything goes” energy is infectious. They Will Kill You isn’t an instant classic, but it’s a low key gem.
They Will Kill You is streaming on HBO Max now.
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